Cheryl Cole: A Million Lights Album Review

 Before she was a solo artist like she is now, Cheryl Cole was on the show "Popstars: The Rivals" were she competed and made it into the girl group known as "Girls Aloud".  Girls Aloud ended up being one of the most successful girl bands in the U.K. with all but two singles peaking in the top 10 of the charts.  They took a break in 2009 to do solo projects.  Cheryl ended up being a judge on X Factor and released three albums, "3 Words", "Messy Little Raindrops", and "A Million Lights".  Girls Aloud ended up getting back together in 2012, the same year "A Million Lights" was released, and they released their album "Ten" before going on tour and disbanding.  Now Cheryl is back on X Factor and working on her fourth album which will hopefully be released later this year.  Until then I'll review her last album, "A Million Lights", so here's my track by track review:

1) Under the Sun: The second and final single from the album.  It talks about a guy telling a girl everything she wants to hear.  I love this song and it makes me happy when I hear it.  It got comparisons to Natasha Bedingfield's work, which makes sense.  10/10

2) Call My Name: The first single from the album.  I wanted to ignore this song because I had read reviews that it was similar to Rihanna's "We Found Love" which was produced and written by Calvin Harris, who produced this song too.  I don't really like "We Found Love" because it's boring and I tried not to listen to "Call My Name" but one day I was bored and only listened to it once.  But one time is all you need to get that chorus stuck in your head.  It's still in my head as I type this!  9/10

3) Craziest Things (featuring will.i.am): While I credit her for co-writing at least one song on the album, it's pretty boring.  Shame because when her and will.i.am did "3 Words" it was pretty good.  4/10

4) Girl in the Mirror: We all have days where we're stressed and give ourselves a hard time.  this song talks about that.  I initially thought the song was boring until I had a bad day and wouldn't listen to anything but this song.  It definitely helped me out, even though I'm a guy.  10/10

5) A Million Lights: The title track.  It starts off slow initially and later turns into an amazing ballad.  It showcases Cheryl's voice perfectly.  I love this song and it brings a tear to my eye sometimes.  10/10

6) Screw You (featuring Wretch 32): Apparently when Cheryl did this song she was drunk.  If that's the case then she should be drunk doing songs more often because this song is awesome!  Out of all the songs on the album, this is my favorite song!  It starts off slow at first but gets more upbeat and you can feel the anger in her voice.  Rumors were it's about her ex-husband who cheated on her but she denied that.  This song was supposed to be the third single from the album but because of Girls Aloud got back together, the release was cancelled.  Shame.  10/10

7) Love Killer: There are a lot of people that like this song, but I tried listening to it at least three times and I'm not a fan of it.  The song talks about being in love with someone who lets you down, which almost everyone can relate.  Hopefully it'll get better when I listen to it later, but right now it's not that good.  5/10

8) Ghetto Baby: This song was written by Lana Del Rey.  It also feels like Cheryl tried to sound a little like her on this song.  While the song isn't as dance-pop as most of the songs on the album, it does showcase her vocals very well.  The song also a music that was mainly showing closeups of Cheryl and showing her doing a dance routine with her dancers.  Overall a great song.  10/10

9) Sexy Den a Mutha: While it may be described to most as a "dancefloor hit" I'm not really a fan of this song.  5/10

10) Mechanics of the Heart: I ignored this song but the last couple days I can't seem to get it out of my head.  It's a ballad like the title.  The song was written Taio Cruz and it talks about being heartbroken from a previous relationship.  I was going to give it a 7 but I changed my mind at the last minute.  8/10

11) All is Fair: I haven't really listen to this song much.  To me it's not as memorable as the rest of the songs on this album.  4/10

 Cheryl did promote the album on her "A Million Lights Tour" which can be seen on youtube.  My favorite songs on the album are: "Screw You (featuring Wretch 32)", "Under the Sun", "Ghetto Baby", "Girl in the Mirror", "A Million Lights", and "Call My Name".  Out of 110 points I give the album 84 which is 76%, a C+.  Not bad Cheryl, can't wait for you new album!